Stossel has it right

John Stossel’s article today is fantastic, and required reading. An excerpt:

Of course income is down lately, but it’s up sharply over the long run. The chart actually understates the gains because it doesn’t count benefits from new technology. A Kindle may replace a hundred books, but such gains aren’t visible in the government’s data.

As economist Don Boudreaux points out: “the government’s data also underestimates the middle-class’s increasing prosperity, for it ignores the shrinking size of households. In 1967, the average household contained 3.14 persons; in 2006 it contained 2.57 persons. This fact means that the real income for each member of the average household grew.”

Read it. Think about all the advances in technology that improve the quality of your life, and how the cost of that technology has dropped in the last 10 years.